


We Build Then We Break

by XaviaAndromedovna



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Canon Typical Transphobia, F/M, Queer Bashing, So Totally Jossed, TW: Anti-Trans Violence, The Fray, s4ep16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:35:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaviaAndromedovna/pseuds/XaviaAndromedovna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When katie_xoxo changes her mind about not meeting him, Ryder learns some things about identity, prejudice, and happiness.</p><p>Featuring songs from The Fray</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Build Then We Break

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: This fic features anti-trans* violence and transphobic comments
> 
> Also it's un-beta'd, so there might be some grammatical violence too.
> 
> No I don't own Glee. No I don't own The Fray's music. No one is surprised by this.

 

He met her a week ago when she friended him by accident.  She was cute so he didn’t mind.  Somewhere during that week, Ryder got to the point where he felt like he was reliving Romeo and Juliet, only without the death and the weird words.  This girl was _perfect_ for him.  She wasn’t a grammar Nazi like some other girls he’s dated, and they clearly have chemistry.  But more than that, she was smart, like, _really_ smart; she always knew what he needed to fix his wreck of the day.

He knew it was a little sudden, but he wanted to meet her.  Okay, so maybe falling for someone online was stupid, but he couldn’t help it.  She’s perfect, but not in the too-good-to-be-true way.  She just…she fit.  So when she logged off without a word, without even an attempt at discussion, he felt like the stupidest guy on Earth.

This always happens to him.  It happened with Marley.  It happened at his old school.  Every time he gets close to someone, it turns out that he’s not good enough, that no matter how much effort he puts into making it work, it’ll never. Be. Enough.

So when a few days later, he’s online randomly, and she messages him, he’s not that eager to respond.  She keeps trying.  ‘Hey!’  ‘Ryder?’  ‘Please, I think we should talk about this.’ 

He was done talking.  As he went to sign off, she sent one last chat ‘I wanna meet you too.’

That caught his attention.  ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.  I’m sorry I freaked out earlier!’

Ryder laughs ‘no, I understand!  You never know who’s on the other side of the screen’

She doesn’t respond for a few minutes.

‘yeah haha so, Lima Bean tomorrow after school?’

‘sure g2g see you tomorrow :)’ He signs off with the dorkiest smile on his face.  Maybe this time will be different.

~~~

He’s in his room trying to study, but he knows it’s useless.  He’s been on a huge The Fray kick lately, and when his playlist gets to ‘Say When’, he can’t help but fantasize about tomorrow.

_See you there, don’t know where you come from,_

_unaware of the stare from someone._

_Don’t appear to care that I saw you and I want you._

_What’s your name?  ‘Cause I have to know it._

_You let me in, and begin to show it._

_I’m terrified ‘cause we’re heading straight for it, might get it._

_You been the song playing on the background_

_all along but you’re turning up now,_

_and everyone is rising to meet you, to greet you._

_Turn around and you’re walking toward me._

_I’m breaking down, and you’re breathing slowly._

_Just say the word and I will be your man, your man._

_Say when and my own two hands will comfort you tonight._

“RYDER!  Keep it down!”  His mom yells from downstairs.

“SORRY!”  He was singing along at the top of his lungs.  Again.  His family was thankfully used to it, but it was still a tad annoying to live with one of _those_ people.

He closes his textbook and his eyes in one fluid motion and thinks up ways to make tomorrow more perfect than it already would be.

~~~

She’s five minutes late.  But that’s fine, you know?  Traffic can be weird this time of year, and it’s not like he was a stickler for appointments or anything.  He was just really nervous and really excited.  While he was searching out the window for the umpteenth time, Unique came over and sat down.

“Wa— Unique!  Hey what’s up?”

She gives him a wan smile with no eye contact “Hi Ryder.”

“Look I hate to boot ya, but I’m kinda meeting someone.”

“I know.”

Ryder gives her an amusedly curious look.  He laughs nervously “wait, how’d you know that?”

“When you said you wanted to meet I promised I’d never do it again, but I figured I owed you an explanation.”

The bottom drops out of Ryder’s stomach.  He connects the dots in silence, his eyes the only clues to the things he’s trying to articulate.  Unique continues with more shame than many have ever seen in her.

“At first it was just a way to pump you for information about Marley, but then you were just _SO DAMN TRANSPHOBIC_ that I had to do something to change your mind.  I didn’t think you’d…that you’d actually…”

But Ryder didn’t hear a word he— she?  he always had trouble with what to call the liar in front of him.  Out of spite, he chooses ‘he’.  Anyway, he doesn’t hear a word _he_ says because all he can picture is himself, Unique, and a broken wall made of fragile hopes.

_The how I can’t recall_

_but I’m staring at what once was the wall_

_that separated East and West._

_Now they meet amidst the broad daylight._

_So this is where you are,_

_and this is where I am_

_somewhere between unsure and a hundred._

And he’s singing because he just DOESN’T understand why “Unique” would do this to him.  In his mental prison, Unique picks up the number.

_It’s hard I must confess._

_I’m banking on the rest to clear away._

_‘Cause we have spoken everything._

And he can’t resist a heartrending cry of harmony with the enemy:  _Everything short of I love—_

So they sing.

_You right where you are_

_from right where I am_

_somewhere between unsure and a hundred._

He bolts up from the table, still not having said anything through Unique’s explanation, runs to the side of the building, and vomits.

~~~

As a rule, things are always a little bit tense in the choir room, but seeing as not even three days ago Ryder and Unique seemed to be on the Acceptance Express, the elephant they’ve sat between them is frankly annoying.

“Okay,” Kitty snarks.  “What did Ryder say now, Miss Thang?”  Unique doesn’t meet her gaze.  Ryder guffaws.

“Yes, it’s always my fault.”

“Just saying, you’re the one who’s 0 for 2 in terms of feminine PR right now.  Oh! Maybe you should _sing_ about it.”  The dripping sarcasm doesn’t deter her from pulling Ryder to the floor/stage/arena that the choir room has become over the past four years.  “Spill it.”

He tentatively whispers something to the band and they pick up with an all-too-familiar piano ostinato.

_I found God on the corner of First and Amistad_

_where the West was all but won_

_all alone smoking his last cigarette._ The group is shocked when he looks right at Unique who just glares.

_I said where you been, he said ask anything._

_Step One:_ Unique interrupts _You say we need to talk.  He walks._

_You say sit down, it’s just to talk._

_He smiles politely back at you,_

_you stare politely right on through_

_Some sort of window to your right                In the end everyone ends up alone._

_as he goes left and you stay right                 Losing her, the only one who’s ever known_

_between the lines of fear and blame_

_you begin to wonder why you came_

Ryder pushes forward

  _Lost and insecure you found me.  You found me_

_lying on a floor, surrounded.  Surrounded._

 

Unique takes over

_Where did I go wrong?  I lost a friend_

_somewhere alone in the bitterness_

_and I would have stayed up with you all night_

_had I known how to save a life._

 

And Ryder?  He’s had enough.  It’s time to yell.

_Early morning the city breaks,_

_and I’ve been calling for years and years and years and years and you_

_should’ve left me no messages.  Should’ve sent me no letters._

_You’ve got some kinda nerve taking all I want!_

 

Wait, did he just...?

_As he begins to raise his voice, lower yours._

_Grant him one last choice:_

_try to slip past his defense_

_without claiming innocence._

 

‘Oh no, bitch,’ he thinks.  You’re not getting off that easy.  He doesn’t realize he’s crying and quite frankly doesn’t care.

_Lost and insecure you found me.  You found me_

_lying on the floor.  Where were you?  Where were you!_ _  
_

_Why’d you have to wait?  Where were you?        Where did I go wrong?_

_Where were you?  Just a little late.                    And I would have stayed up…_

_You found me you found ME—_

_Why’d you have to wait to find me?  To find me._

 

And with that, he’s out the door.

Unique follows him.

“Ryder!  Ryder talk to me!”  He keeps walking.

“There’s nothing to say.”

“What are you madder about: that I lied to you, or that it was me and not a ‘real’ girl?”

Ryder spun around way too quickly. “NO Don’t you DARE make it about that!”

“Oh it’s about that and you know it.  Look I fucked up and I’m sorry, and I’m sorry I let it get far enough that you started having feelings.  Take that out on me, I own it.  But don’t you dare imply that I _made_ you fall for me, that I tricked you into it or some shit.  She’s not me, because she’s not _real_.  So you can relax, your precious heterosexuality’s intact.”

Unique diva stomps back towards the choir room but doesn’t go in.  Ryder has left the building.  The diva bows and exits the stage, leaving Unique to lean against the wall, tired and worried.  She wishes she’d never made that stupid profile.

_Maybe in five or ten yours and mine could meet again and straighten this whole thing out._

_Maybe then honesty need not be feared as a friend or an enemy._

_This is the distance.  This is my game face._

 

Ryder walks home, numb.  _There’s really no way to reach me._

Unique’s not home right now.  Neither is 'Wade'.  Just a shell of tears. _There’s really no way to reach me._

_Is there really no way to reach me?_

_Am I already…_

 

~~~

He gets up in the middle of the night and pours over the messages he exchanged with ‘katie_xoxo’.  He remembered that Unique had said something earlier that week that reminded him of the profile, and since he wasn’t sleeping at 3am anyway, it was as good a time as any to confirm his suspicions.  Some parts of the profile are clearly made up, but once every five lines, something Unique shines through, something Ryder should have seen coming a mile away.  And she’d listened, and gave good advice, and she— is just a fantasy.  Or is she?  She said to stop worrying because it wasn’t real, but it’s real for him.  It’s SO real, and he’s starting to wonder whether any of it was real for her too?  He logs off and tries to sleep again, but all it accomplishes is an odd dream sequence wherein Unique is at a train station on the next car to Vienna and he’s stuck behind a pane of glass with the Glee club.

 

_There are certain people you just keep coming back to._

_She is right in front of you._

_You begin to wonder: could you find a better one compared to her?_

_Now she’s in question._

_And all at once the crowd begins to sing:_

_Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same._

_Maybe you want her, maybe you need her._

_Maybe you’ve started to compare to someone not there._

_Looking for the right one you’d light up the world to find_

_when no questions cross your mind._

_But she won’t keep on waiting for you to battle doubt._

_Looks no good for you to sort it out._

_And all at once the crowd begins to sing:_

_sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same._

_Maybe you want her, maybe you need her._

_Maybe you’ve started to compare to someone not there._

_Maybe you want it, maybe you need it._

_Maybe it’s all you’re running from._

_Perfection will not come._

 

And while he doesn’t get a GREAT night’s rest, and while he’s still confused as all Hell, in the morning he knows that for better or for worse, he’s not giving up that easily on the chance that the girl behind the computer might be the one.

~~~

Unique isn’t at Glee club the next day.  Ryder’s not even sure she’s at school.  His text to her that morning— ‘can we talk?’— went unanswered.  No one’s heard from her.  He gets through another ordinary day of school, after which he resolves to go over to her house.

He’s walking past the gas station a few blocks from where he thinks she lives when he sees a guy kicking something.  Not just kicking; beating the crap out of.

“Hey!”  He runs over.  The man just keeps beating on the screaming mass beneath him, which Ryder quickly recognizes to be the girl he’s been wanting to see all day.  He got his wish.  “Stop it!”  He comes in swinging, and he and the man tussle for a bit before the attacker runs off.  Ryder recognizes him as a Warbler.  The name Hunter comes to mind.

“Are you okay?  Unique, talk to me, where are you hurt?”

“ _I know you hate this one…_ ” she whispers before she passes out.

“FUCK!”  He tries to get her upright but he can’t get her more than a foot off the ground in any one place.  He calls Blaine, the only one he can think of with a car right now “Come to the Goose Hill on Walnut St.  We need to take Unique to the hospital.  She just got attacked.”  Assured that Blaine was on his way, Ryder tried to keep her head up and check her pulse, all the while pretending that he could keep her alive by sheer will.

_Come across you lost and broken_

_You’re coming to, but you’re slow in waking._   Maybe if he tells it differently it’ll come true.

_You start to shake.  You still haven’t spoken._

_What happened?_

_They’re coming back, but you just don’t know when._

_You wanna cry, but there’s nothing coming._

_They’re gonna push, until you give in, oh say when._

And he realizes that he’s a part of this story now.  This isn’t just some random incident.  This is a hate crime.

_It all began with a man, a country._

_Every plan turns another century_

_around again, another nation fallen._

_Maybe God can be on both sides._

_Love the gun, never understood why_

_some of us never get it so good, so good._

And he HAS been lucky, compared to the form beneath him.  He suddenly feels the most haunting pain all the way in the depths of his soul, a pain that even 50 years later he would still remember as the worst of anything he's had to endure.  He feels this, he realizes, because he’s just as much a part of what got her here as Hunter is.

_Some of this was here before us._

_All of this will go after us._

_It never stops until we give in._

_Give in, oh say when and my own two arms will carry you tonight!_

_Say when and my own two hands will comfort you tonight!_

_Say when, and my own two arms will carry you tonight.  Tonight…_

~~~

Unique is in the hospital.  It takes all of Ryder’s wherewithal even to be at school right now and not there with her, the girl he made feel so rejected that she had to deceive him into seeing her for who she was.

When Blaine had picked them up, he needed only to say one word: Hunter.  Though Dalton was disqualified for regionals, Hunter wasn’t expelled, and he was as bigoted as he was vindictive against the New Directions.  They were more than willing to reciprocate.  So after school, Ryder, backed by Jake, Blaine, Sam, and Kitty took a trip over to Dalton to visit Hunter, who they dragged into the bathroom, locking the door.

“Well, now, the club for misfit toys has come to harass me about the tranny.  I’m shaking.”

“You won’t be doing anything when I’m done with you.”  Ryder has murder in his eyes.

“Please!” Hunter scoffs.  “What’re you gonna do, sing me an angwy soang?”

“Oh we’re gonna sing you something.”

_I don’t know you but I know what you did to her._

_She told me and I happen to believe her too._  The others go to stand watch outside the door.

 _They will be three steps behind, you will not know who’s got you._   Hunter’s a little more worried.

 _Oh, so you’re sorry now.  All is not well, it’s not ended._   Ryder steps a little closer.

_Hold your breath till it’s over._

_There’s something left underwater._

The punches start flying.  Hunter draws first blood, but Ryder manages to get plenty of good licks in as well.  He pushes Hunter into a stall.  Hunter trips.  Ryder pulls him close enough to hear.

_You’ve been quiet.  There are things you do not speak of._

_But if you stay gone a little longer your keys won’t work._   He locks the stall door.

 _I will be two steps behind.  You will not know what’s got you._   Terror sets in.

_Oh, so you’re sorry now.  All is not well it’s not ended._

_Hold your breath till it’s over._  

Hunter’s head is in the toilet and it doesn’t look like Ryder will be letting it up anytime soon.

 _Something else is underwater._  

The others hear the sloshing around and come in to investigate.  They break into the stall and remove Ryder from Hunter just before he would have become a murderer.

“Dude what the fuck?!”  Jake is furious.

“A near-death experience for a near-death experience.”  Ryder says calmly.  He walks out of the bathroom and the rest of them follow him, more worried than ever about their friend.

~~~

It’s not until he gets back to school that he realizes the magnitude of what just happened.  He almost killed a man today.  What’s more, he feels nothing but peace.  This should bother him, but it doesn’t.  He knows it’ll never happen again.  It’ll never need to, because he’s never gonna let Unique out of his sight.  Everything will be okay now.  Not easy— never easy, he knows that now— but okay.

He can feel the stares in glee club, all asking the same question.  Is he gonna be okay?

“Mr. Schu?  If I may.”

“Sure…”  Schu gives him the floor.  Jake follows him up with his guitar and starts to play.

_Happiness was just outside my window._

_I thought it’d crash blowing 80 miles an hour._

_But happiness is a little more like knocking_

_on your door and you just let it in._

He spent his whole life waiting for a whirlwind to blow through and make him instantly happy.  He knows now that happiness is simple, like what he had with Unique online without all the bullshit in the way.  He hoped to get that back.

_Happiness feels a lot like sorrow._

_Let it be, you can’t make it come or go._

_You are gone.  Not for good but for now,_

_but gone for now feels a lot like gone for good._

_Happiness is a firecracker sitting on my headboard._

_Happiness was never mine to hold._

_Careful child, light the fuse and get away_

_‘cause happiness throws a shower of sparks._

He thinks off-hand that this must be what coming out feels like.  Because suddenly his friends understand, and they join the song.

_Happiness damn near destroys you._

_It breaks your faith to pieces on the floor._

_So you tell yourself that’s enough for now._

_But happiness has a violent roar._

_Happiness…it’s like the old man told me:_

_look for it and you’ll never find it all._

_But let it go, live your life and leave it._

_Then one day, you’ll wake up and she’ll be—_

And who should walk through the door but Unique.  He turns to face her, and the smile on his face says all she needs to know.

_Home._

_She will be home._

The New Directions welcome their wounded member back into the fold.  Hugs and tears and laughter abound as the music swells and Ryder just watches Unique **bask** in the love her friends show her.  He is the last to greet her, and as he sings one last time, _she’ll be…_ , he doesn’t need to finish the thought, because his lips have already found themselves at home on hers.


End file.
